Exploring art events in and around NYC

October 2009

10/30/2009

~Feminist artist Nancy Spero passed away on October 18th at the age of 83. Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1926, Spero studied at the Art Institute of Chicago where she met her husband, painter Leon Golub, whom she was married to for 53 years (!) until his passing in 2004.

The pair moved to Paris in 1959 and settled in New York City in 1964. In response to the Vietnam War, Spero created The War Series (1966-1970), drawings depicting "fighter planes and helicopters as giant, phallic insects, the series linked military power and sexual predatoriness, but also included women among the attackers," (from NYTs obit).

In 1969, Spero joined Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), which protested "sexist and racist policies in New York City museums," ("they picketed the Whitney Museum, among other institutions, for failing to represent women," Artnews). In 1972, she was a co-founder of Artists in Residence (A.I.R.) Gallery, an all-women cooperative in Soho, now located in DUMBO. In the mid 1970s, she decided "to focus her art exclusively on images of women, as participants in history and as symbols in art, literature and myth."

I learned about Nancy Spero after seeing Chiara Clemente's 2008 documentary Our City Dreams which followed Spero along with four other woman artists (Swoon, Kiki Smith, Ghada Amer, Marina Abramovic) based in New York City. In the doc, Spero came across vibrant, charming, intelligent, and strong. Learn more about Our City Dreams at imdb.com. Read Spero's obituary in the NYTs here. And learn more about Spero at artnews.com.

~This past weekend The New York Times had a short article on the sad rise and fall of the Bellwether Gallery. After opening the gallery in Brooklyn in 1999, owner Rebecca Smith was profiled in a Times piece titled How to Become an Instant Art Star. Smith moved the gallery to Chelsea and 2004, and when the economy tanked, found her business struggling and closed it last June.

Now living in Greenwich, Connecticut with her fiance, Smith is "slowly selling off her art collection" and planning her next move. "She says she's done with the art world and she's no longer transfixed by its glamour." She's considering writing a book. Just a thought - you may not want to title it How to Become an Instant Art Star. Read full article at nytimes.com.

~And finally, if you're in or planning to be in Phili soon, check out Malcolm McLaren's Shallow 1-21 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. McLaren edited and looped footage from vintage, obscure sex films and paired the clips with his music creating "musical paintings." The end results are 21 short videos totaling 86-minutes in length when watched throughout.

Many of the videos in Shallow (the ones that don't contain nudity) screened outdoors on a jumbo-tron in the middle of Times Square during the summer of 2008, courtesy of Creative Time. The current exhibition is the first time that the film will be shown in its entirety in the U.S. McLaren used his keen eye (and ears) to create films that are truly stunning, mesmerizing and beautiful. Learn more at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts' website here. Through January 3, 2010.

10/29/2009

Currently on view at the Art Directors Club Gallery on West 29th Street are this year's fifty winners of the ADC Young Guns 7 competition. The ADC Young Guns competition is a bit like AIGA Three Sixty Five 30's bratty but talented younger sib. The competition is open to anyone 30 and under with at least 2 years experience under his/her belt working in advertising, design, illustration, and photography. The winning entries definitely feel younger than those at AIGA and tend to lean on the twee, hipstery side. Moleskin awards $1,500 in grants to three top entrants and publishes a limited-edition book of the winning works. Mario Hugo and Fx&Mat each received $250 grants while Siggi Eggertsson's cool, graphic, pop-inspired designs received the top honor of a $1,000 grant. Congrats to all the winners!

The Art Directors Club was founded in 1920 and has served "as a barometer for the constant changes and developments in visual media and communications." The Young Guns award was introduced in 1996. According to the ADC's website, "ADC Young Guns honors the vanguard of creative professionals who let loose their imaginations, shattering conventions and breaking boundaries with a dash of brilliance and personal flair." Previous Young Gunners serve as the selection jury and choose the new crop of winners. Past Young Guns winners include Stefan Sagmeister (YG1), Mike Mills (YG1), and Ryan McGinness (YG2).

Learn more about all the ADC Young Guns 7 winners and see samples of their work at adcyoungguns.org. Read more about the ADC Young Guns competition here. See pics of some of my favorite entries below. On view at the ADC Gallery at 106 West 29th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues) through November 6th.

10/28/2009

Founded in 1914, AIGA is the oldest and largest professional association for design, representing "more than 22,000 design professionals, educators and students through national activities and local programs developed by 64 chapters and 240 student groups."

The AIGA National Design Center on lower Fifth Avenue currently has on view selections from Three Sixty Five 30, The best design from 2008, the organization's renowned, annual design competition. Widely known as "the most selective statement on design excellence today," the competition is judged on "aesthetic judgments and an evaluation of communication effectiveness." The jury (made up of design pros from agencies throughout the U.S. as well as from Toronto and Stockholm) takes into consideration each project "within the context of its purpose, content, objective, audience and resources." Out of over 3,700 entries, AIGA selected to exhibit 182 to represent the best in communication design for 2008.

The competition was broken down into seven categories: Informing, Packaging, Promoting, Entertaining, Branding, Experimenting (sorry, I didn't get any pics from this category), and Book Design (which I did not see at the exhibit but you can see online). There were so many great examples of great design. Not surprising, Pentagram and Stefan Sagmeister had multiple entries. See my photos below of some of my favorite entries and see much more at AIGA's website at designarchives.aiga.org. Through November 25th.

10/27/2009

Another show worth trying to catch before it closes on Saturday is George Grosz, The Years in America: 1933 - 1958 at the David Nolan Gallery in Chelsea. This is the first major U.S. retrospective of the artist's work during this time period. Grosz was a German painter and caricaturist who brutally lampooned the German bourgeoisie and military in his early work. In January 1933, after being declared a "degenerate artist" and before Hitler took power, Grosz fled Berlin and emigrated to New York.

During his first two years in New York, instead of creating the scathing social and political commentaries he was known for, Grosz painted "street scenes and cityscapes." According to the exhibit's press release, "One widely held opinion states that Grosz lost his much-admired
audacity upon immigrating to New York; that he miraculously turned
apolitical during the crossing aboard the Stuttgart in January 1933,
while Nazi henchmen were ransacking his studio in Berlin... it appears as though after Grosz's immigration there is
little left of his fearlessness, his fiery agitation... He not only escaped from a regime that saw him
as an enemy; he also left Germany in bitterness about the country's
workers' movement and intellectual left who yielded to the Nazis almost
without a fight... He could not, nor did he want to, comment on the situation in
America with the same acerbic wit that he had used to chastise Prussian
militarism."

Unfortunately, the new-found optimism that came from his move didn't last long. By 1935, personal and professional frustrations along with brewing problems back in Germany, and Europe as a whole, led Grosz to "pessimism and depression" and back to darker works. The years leading up to World War II had Grosz "depict[ing] the apocalypse" and creating what he called "images of hell."

In complete contrast to the artist's cynical pieces are his serene paintings of nudes posing on Cape Cod beaches. Grosz painted landscapes and sand dunes on the Cape during peaceful visits there with his wife and two sons. Though drastically different from his politically charged works, these calm, romantic pieces are an important part of Grosz's oeuvre during his years in America (and again show that the artist is not entirely all doom and gloom). Not surprisingly, these were criticized and dismissed by those who preferred his "witty, extremely critical political" work.

After living and working in the U.S. for "more than half of his artistically productive life," Grosz returned to Berlin where, only a few months after his return, he died in July 1959. Learn more about George Grosz, The Years in America: 1933 - 1958 at Davidnolangallery.com. Learn more about Grosz at moma.org. Through October 31st.

10/26/2009

I only learned about the Hung Liu exhibit, Apsaras, at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in Chelsea last Friday. Fortunately, I was in the neighborhood, so I dropped by to see the show before it closes on the 31st. I'm so glad I did! I wasn't familiar with Liu prior to seeing this exhibit, and I am very happy to have caught it and to have finally learned about the artist and her work.

Born in Changchun, China in 1948 Liu grew up in Beijing under Mao's rule. Straight after high school, Liu was sent to the country to work alongside peasants in the fields for four years. While there, Liu photographed and drew the farmers and their families. In 1972 she attended Beijing's Teachers College and studied art and education. In 1975, after graduating, she began teaching art both at a school in Beijing as well as on television on a children's show straightforwardly titled How to Draw and Paint. In 1984, after studying mural painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and waiting four years for her passport, Liu moved to the states to study visual arts at the University of California, San Diego. Liu currently resides in Oakland.

Perhaps an early influence for her current exhibit, Apsaras, was a "trip to northern China to paint landscapes" in July 1976 (from the exhibit's press release). During this trip, Liu experienced first-hand "one of the largest earthquakes to hit the modern world," which killed 242,000 people. In May of 2008, Liu returned to China for two solo exhibitions of her work in Beijing. This time around, the massive 8.0 magnitude Sichuan Earthquake ravaged southern China killing approximately 90,000. Apsaras is a collection of paintings Liu created "depicting people in the aftermath of the Sichuan quake."

These paintings, while heartbreaking, raw, and emotional in their vivid depiction of the survivors' "grief, shock, confusion, stunned silence, courage, and mourning," show a bit of hope with the addition of apsaras flying close to the victims. Apsaras are "traditional images of Buddhist flying angels" or "heavenly nymphs." The inclusion of these angels does not feel disjointed, precious, or cloying. As the press release states, "the images of birds, flowers, and religious iconography Liu circulates within her otherwise photo-derived visual fields are more like prayers than provocations, attempts to repair a picture broken by war, famine, social chaos, or, as in these paintings, earthquake."

Liu studied ancient Buddhist iconography painted on the walls of the thousand-year-old Dunhuang Caves, or "caves of a thousand Buddhas," in the late 1970s. The caves "contain some of the finest known examples of Buddhist art, including countless flying angels..." It feels as if Liu is offering her distraught subjects apsaras to protect them from further devastation and to help them persevere and find peace. Learn more about the Apsaras exhibit at NancyHoffmangallery.com. And learn more about Liu at the artist's website kelliu.com.

10/23/2009

On view until Saturday at Apex Art in Tribeca is A Way Beyond Fashion, a small exhibit displaying the work of 11 artists and/or designers that "analyzes the shifting boundaries between art and fashion design." The artists/designers in the exhibit "blur the lines between the two disciplines" and along with questioning individuality and identity they "revise some key technological, ecological and socio-economic issues of our day." The exhibit's curator, Robert Punkenhofer, states in the exhibition notes, "For A Way Beyond Fashion, my primary intention was to find works on the periphery between art and fashion. Together, the explored issues - relating to communication, identity, technology and ecological sustainability - provide exciting fashion themes, which in turn are analyzed from the perspective of art."

Designer Rudi Gernreich "whose level of conceptual depth and radicalism" inspired Punkenhofer to curate the exhibit, introduced the "unisex design concept" at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan. Along with "thematiz[ing] sexual identity as an important aspect of fashion," the pioneering Gernreich also "experimented with technology, toyed with unusual fabrics, including vinyl, plastic and paper, and created the space suit and military look."

One of my favorite designers, London-based Hussein Chalayan, often incorporates technology into his clothing designs. On view is his 2007 LED Dress made of "Crystallized Swarovski Elements," LED lights, and chiffon/silk overlay. The dress actually lights up like a Christmas tree! The Absent Presence (2005), a 5-screen video piece created by Chalayan and starring fashion fave, Tilda Swinton, plays on a flat-screen television beside his LED Dress. Originally shown at the Venice Biennale, the video shows a future that includes "fashion scans" that "access private data and track consumer behavior."

Highly inspired and influenced by the "indigenous population of the Yucatan and other areas of [her native] Mexico" Carla Fernandez "challeng[es] the role of fashion and design in creating cultural identity." Along with Pedro Reyes, Fernandez created Square Clothes for Round-Minded People (2009) which consists of "seven pieces of clothing featuring a strictly geometric design of squares and rectangles." The very cool and contemporary pieces are made of wool, suede and cotton and hang from the wall on steel hangers. Accompanying videos demonstrate the multiple ways in which the garments can be worn.

New York-based Jenny Marketou created ParKour (wear), 12 wearable paper dresses emblazoned with advertising slogans like "Fragile" and "Freedom is the new luxury." Marketou hopes to show with her brightly-colored, paper, tent dresses (that remind me of Stephen Sprouse) "how the human body is reclaiming the public space through fashion."

Japanese artist Takehiko Sanada enlisted 500 volunteers to cultivate their own cotton which he used to create Hou/Jun (2008) which means "healthy and happy." He used the yarn along with wire and sculpted delicate human forms. According to the exhibit's notes, the process of creating the sculptures helped Sanada attain "the state of an 'enriched heart and mind' where he turns a fragmented, hectic world into an infinitely layered and interconnected life encapsulated in the 'eternal time,'" a contradiction to the fast-paced and soul-crushing fashion industry.

Since I often bemoan the commercialization and dumbing down of fashion - every tasteless starlet now has a clothing line and every velour tracksuit-clad mall-rat proclaims herself a fashion expert, or worse, a "fashionista" (Have you ever noticed how the people who bandy that word about the most are usually the least fashionable?) - I'm glad that these artists and designers are aiming to take the art form to an intellectual and socially responsible level. Learn more at apexart.org. Through October 24th.

10/22/2009

I'd make a terrible mother. I really would. Not only am I incredibly selfish and immature, I have a tendency to choose favorites. Coming from a family of 5 sisters, I should know how unfair and basically uncool this is, but I can't help myself. I still play favorites. I always feel a twinge of guilt when I go to group exhibitions and find myself giving more time and attention to one artist over the others. It happened to me yesterday when I went to check out the Registered group show at White Columns.

The show features the work of four artists "selected from White Columns' online Curated Artist Registry." The artists, who are currently not affiliated with a NYC gallery, include Elena Bajo, Margarida Correia, Gregg Evans, and Claudia Weber. Bajo works with found materials and presents an installation with a slide projector pointing at a tall stack of white papers. Correia presents two series of photographs taken from an ongoing project called Things, "in which she photographs the interiors of friends' homes in Lisbon, Portugal." Evans presents photos from a series called The Things I Once Owned that include images of an old Christmas Card, a day planner containing autographs from the band Le Tigre, and a picture of his father. Weber "recontextualizes materials and forms within existing architectural spaces" creating abstract, mixed media installations.

I was really drawn to Lisbon-born/New York-based artist Margarida Correia's photos of her friends' collections of heirlooms, family photos, childhood pictures, adolescent possessions, books, antiques, and tchotchkes. I liked her juxtaposition of "images from past and present... to establish a continuity of the subject's personal history." Correia's images are packed with details and offer up several, vivid stories about her friends' lives, then and now. Learn more about the Registered show at whitecolumns.org. And check out Correia's website at Margaridacorreia.com. Through October 24th.

I also found myself bitten by the favoritism bug about a week ago when I went to see the group show at Metro Pictures. On view were Polish-born/Berlin-based Paulina Olowska's large-scale collages; Los Angeles-based Stephen G. Rhodes' multi-media, twisted take on the Disney ride "The Hall of Presidents," featuring video, painting, sculpture, photography, and drawing; and Chicago-based Catherine Sullivan's new, single-channel film LULU - Or: To What Ends Does the Bourgeoisie Need Despair, inspired by the 1978 love affair between silent-film siren Louise Brooks (also known as Lulu) and the creator of Oh! Calcutta!, Kenneth Tynan. Sullivan's work combines footage from Brooks' classic film Pandora's Box, a 1971 televised production of Oh! Calcutta!, and original film created by the artist.

Again, I found myself drawn to one artist's work - this time Paulina Olowska's five, poppy, autobiographical collages. The pieces feature "a young couple riding in a vintage Volkswagen convertible under a large umbrella that shields them from the dynamic and dangerous: taxes, former loves, desires, doubts and the past." I was first drawn to the large, silk screened collages' punchy graphics and campy imagery, and was further reigned in by their sardonic, cryptic messages. Learn more at metropictures.com. Closed October 17th.

10/21/2009

Just a quick note: to honor the 50th anniversary of its opening, the Guggenheim, or the Guge, as I like to call it, will be offering free admission all day today (Wednesday, October 21st) with various, special events going on throughout the day (open until 5:45pm).

One of the most despicable people I've ever had the misfortune of knowing owned a Bichon Frise. Being an avid dog lover, I was surprised to find myself momentarily disliking the dog, and even the breed as a whole, due to this one dog's detestable owner. Yes, I'd somehow found a way to make an innocent dog guilty by association. I fortunately snapped out of my misguided fog of contempt and stopped judging the little, white, fuzzy-wuzzy pupster since he can't help that his owner is a jerk-ass with no redeemable qualities (can you tell I really don't like this guy?). Sadly, though I've overcome judging the little doggie (and his brethren) based on his vile human companion, I do still always think of that loathsome "man" whenever I see a Bichon Frise. This may sound crazy, but it almost, almost, prevented me from going to see the small exhibit The Bichon Frise in Art currently on view at Art Since the Summer of '69 in the Lower East Side.

Edward J. Shephard Jr., the proud owner of two Bichon Frises himself, started a website in 1996 focusing on "depictions of the Bichon Frise in various works of art spanning over 2,000 years." The current exhibit presents some of these images alongside artwork featuring "ancestors of the breed, as well as other works that Shephard has deemed to be possible depictions of the Bichon Frise or its ancestors."

Gaining popularity in the 16th century, the Bichon was a favored breed among French and Spanish royalty. It's reported that King Henry III of France took his Bichon with him everywhere and carried it along in a specially made basket "that he hung with ribbons from his neck" (from the press release). Goya, Titian, and Sir Joshua Reynolds have all depicted the diminutive, regal lap-dogs in their work.

Along with images culled from Shephard's 14-year project, Art Since the Summer of '69 also asked artists Franz Beckenbauer, Josh Blackwell, Marcel Dionne & A. Joakimsen, Vidya Gastaldon, Bjarne Melgaard, and J. Penry to create new pieces to display in the show. As the press release for the exhibit accurately sums it up, "This historical narrative is not only a great resource for Bichon Frise lovers, but for dog and art lovers everywhere." See gallery's website at artsince69.com. See Shephard's on-going, in-depth and lovingly curated The Bichon Frise in Art website at http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~eshephar/bichoninart/bichoninart.html. Through October 25th.

10/20/2009

If All Hallows' Eve can't get here quickly enough for you, a trip to see Francine Spiegel's Mud And Milk at Deitch Projects might help you get your fright on. The RISD grad and upstate New York-based painter amalgamates "imagery from monster magazines, horror films, or her own performances" creating Frankenstein-esque canvases and female subjects resembling "gory super-heroines" (from press release).

To create some of the imagery incorporated into the seven paintings in Mud and Milk, Spiegel enlisted ten friends and fellow artists to costar alongside her in a goo-filled, slimy, messy performance she choreographed and staged at Deitch. Judging from the large-scale photos documenting the performance currently on view in the front of the Deitch space on Grand Street, Spiegel and her volunteers had the mother of all food fights including: "10 pounds of grits, 5 jugs of pancake syrup, 10 squirt bottles of grape jelly, 5 bottles of Pepto-Bismol, 20 buckets of tempura paint, 20 cans of whipped cream; plus silly string, shaving cream, Fruit Loops, flour, Kool-Aid, glitter, pie, marshmallow Fluff, fake arms, fake blood and chocolate syrup."

This list of ingredients was not arbitrary - Spiegel selected these items for her performance based on information she gathered from "Fangoria Magazine's behind-the-scenes horror movie ingredients" and food fetish websites. As the exhibit's press release states, "Taking the ingredients out of the male-manipulated world of porn and using them to make feminine and feminist works of art, Fran's results were somewhere between the erotic and the horrible." Being OCD, I didn't see the eroticism in the pictures of women thickly covered in multiple layers of ick, though I did see the B-movie horror aspect. The final paintings are disturbing and frightening but also a bit cheeky. And though the women from the performance who made it into the final paintings may look a frightful mess, they look nothing like victims - a welcome twist on the traditional horror/slasher flick stereotype of female characters. Learn more at Deitch.com and read a Q&A with Spiegel at villagevoice.com. Through October 31st.